Today October 8th marks the birthday of Vaclav Havel. His name might not be so familiar to Americans, but he is a truly impressive figure and a "cool" one at that.
Václav Havel, the founder of the modern-day Czech Republic (also known as Czechia) is undoubtedly cool by any definition of the word. A political dissident under the Soviet-backed regime, he served hard time in Communist prisons rather than bend the knee to their authority. His moral courage acted as a beacon of hope for the entire resistance movement behind the Iron Curtain.
Havel was born in Prague in 1936, to a wealthy and prominent family in then Czechoslovakia, a nation newly independent from the Austro-Hungarian Empire made up of the future Czechia and Slovakia. His paternal line was comprised of real estate developers, while his mother was the daughter of a famous diplomat and journalist. As one might imagine, this did not make his life easy after the Czechoslovakian Communist coup d’etat of 1948.
Indeed, the new Communist regime dictated his life path largely on the basis of his class background. He took gymnasium classes while working as an apprentice chemical lab assistant. Due to political and social reasons, none of the post-secondary humanities programs would accept him as a student. He was accepted into a prestigious economics program, but dropped out after two years. He entered into compulsory military service in 1957, and left in 1959.
Vaclav Havel was more than the founder of modern-day Czech Republic. He was a political dissident, a leader of resistance, a prisoner, a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, a hero who refused to bow down to Soviet-backed Communists, and eventual Czech president. This is his forgotten story.
Continue reading: Vaclav Havel: The Forgotten History of the Political Dissident Who Founded the Czech Republic at Ammo.com.